Author: Tim Sampson

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Opinion The Last Word

Tim Sampson Recalls the Flyer’s Early Daze

Okay, I have a big, fat knot in my stomach. A knot the size of a Burger King Double Whopper with cheese, although I haven’t had one of those in about four years. It’s a knot the size of West Memphis, but more about that later. It’s a knot the size of a pie at Knott’s Berry Farm in California, although I’ve never been there to see how big that theme park really is. I have a very strong and dramatic dislike of theme parks and basically will not go to one for any reason. I visited Opryland once when I was in probably the seventh grade, and I vowed never to go to one again. Well, I guess I did go to Libertyland a time or two over the years here in Memphis, but that’s neither here nor there and has nothing to do with the big knot in my stomach.

I think I have this knot, this pit, this twisted, gurgling thing in my gut because this is officially the 30th anniversary issue of the Memphis Flyer, and I feel that I should be waxing nostalgic and retelling all of the many things that happened in the early days when I helped get it started and served as its founding editor. The only problem is that the more I think about it, the older I feel, and it is making the knot grow bigger and more volcanic.

I’m sure lots of the early days of this paper will be covered elsewhere in this issue, so that eases the pressure some. But I still feel like I should give an account of what it was like in those days and, well, at this point, I think I’m going to throw up the knot. But here goes with a few highlights from the decade that the first cell phone hit the market, and, believe me, back then they were bigger than this knot in my gut.

The personal ads: Oh, yeah, the personal ads. I guess every other alternative paper in the country contained personal dating ads, but to my knowledge no other paper in Memphis had ever tried it. Remember, this was before we had internet access, much less match.com, eharmony.com, gay.com, christiansingles.com, farmersonly.com, or any of the other online services to introduce strangers to each other for the purposes of dating or whatever.

It was scandalous to some, welcomed by others. I remember one ad from a woman who described herself as having a “Ruben-esque” figure, attempting to equate herself to the rather fleshy subjects in the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens. Unfortunately, she spelled it “Reuben-esque,” equating her figure to a corned beef and sauerkraut sandwich on rye.

Among our tiny staff at the time, there were some who ran personal ads for co-workers as a joke. I don’t even remember how one answered a personal ad back then, as we didn’t have email or passwords or any other real form of communication other than the phone. So I guess we called each other to set up these outings? All I know is that I tried it a couple of times just for fun and ended up having a bird almost peck my eyes out in Bartlett after a stroll through the Raleigh Springs Mall and attending Graceland’s Candlelight Vigil after consuming far too much alcohol.

The way we got the editorial content together: Yes, we did have computers. They were little beige contraptions that were foreign to me at first and used a floppy disk so that some of the freelance writers could supply their copy on a disk, and it could be copied to the computer. However, most people back then still had typewriters and would simply type their various columns and articles, and I would either have to go to their homes to fetch the copy or have them bring it to the office, where I would have to key-stroke them into the computer. Some people actually hand-wrote their prose. And goodness knows we did not have spell check programs back then.

Once the articles and columns were typed up, I somehow got them to the people in the back of the room who were called typesetters. I think they had to retype the copy so that it would come out on long sheets of shiny white paper, which then had to be proofread and sent back for corrections until the copy came out clean and ready to go. Then, it had to be run through a machine that coated the back of it with wax and then cut up with a knife with a sharp little blade and then pasted to big sheets of cardboard, which were then taken to Mississippi on Tuesday afternoons and somehow would come back the next day as a newspaper.

Every Tuesday afternoon, after this race to the finish line, when the box finally went out the door, the staff would all go to the P&H Cafe to decompress, or something like that. And the next day, it all started again.

Thirty years of the Memphis Flyer. It is something to behold.

Tim Sampson was the Flyer‘s first editor and wrote “We Recommend” and “The Rant” columns for many years. He originally wrote this for our 25th anniversary issue, but who’s counting?

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Opinion The Last Word

Tim Sampson’s Last Word (For Real)

So this is very strange. I’ve been staring at a blank page on my computer for some time now, wondering exactly how to retire from writing a newspaper column I’ve written for 27 years now. Yes, TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS. It might even be TWENTY-EIGHT. I have really, really good friends who weren’t even born when I helped start this newspaper as its first editor 100,000 years ago and have been writing a regular column ever since. But I’m not going to go there. I’m not going to write about being old and all the things that have happened during these almost three decades of writing for this paper. Suffice it to say that, to the best of my recollection, Ronald Reagan was president of the United States when I started. Ouch.

So enough is enough is enough. I am done (for now). I want to hand this off to someone who can write about the Republican presidential nominee without having to take five hot showers while scrubbing with Comet. I just can’t do it. So I’m going to part ways with just a little bit of advice for those who care to read, because these are very interesting times we’re in.

Tim Sampson

Just be nice. Be a good, nice person. Be as nice to the person at the Krystal drive-through window as you would be to someone giving you a check for a million dollars. Be as nice as Cookie and Terrence at Ballinger’s at Cooper and Union, sometimes the center of my strange universe. Always be nice to restaurant servers and bartenders. Leave them big tips. They work hard. Just because they are serving you doesn’t mean they are your servants.

Have pets. Have lots of pets in your life. There’s not one thing in this world I can think of that makes me smile as much as a kitten running sideways. I have a new cat named Shirley Chisholm, and she has gone from being totally feral to sleeping on my lap. And don’t worry if your pets scratch the furniture or tear up things. Things are just things. I was on that idiotic nextdoor.com website not long ago, and someone was actually whining because squirrels were eating her decorative pumpkins and she was trying to find a way to repel them. Don’t repel squirrels. And, frankly, don’t buy decorative pumpkins every fall. It’s not very original.

If you have kids, don’t spoil them. Don’t buy them every video game. Give them crayons and colored pencils and a sketchbook, and give them pets. Make them watch reruns of Green Acres. And don’t worry if they scratch the furniture or tear up things.

Don’t smoke cigarettes. I’ve been smoking cigarettes for 40 years, and now I’m trying to quit and I think it might not even be possible. And don’t smoke those e-cigarettes. If you’re going to smoke those, just smoke plain old cigarettes, so just don’t smoke either.

Go to Baltimore. Everyone should go to Baltimore. It’s a great city. I just went for the first time last month while in Washington, D.C., with the Stax Music Academy (when the students performed for three days on the National Mall during the grand opening festival for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture). Baltimore is awesome and gritty like Memphis. And the people there are nice. As you should be. Speaking of the Stax Music Academy, always, always go see them when they perform. The students are the nicest people in the world, and they work hard. They are phenomenally talented — and nice.

Listen to all of the hip-hop and alt-country singer-songwriter rock you want, but also listen to Dusty Springfield. Listen to her sing “Breakfast in Bed.” Eat some leeks in your bed while you listen to her. Listen to opera. For God’s sake, listen to Mavis Staples. Listen to yourself.

And do NOT tell anyone if you are a supporter of the Republican nominee running for president right now. That doesn’t make you appear to be rebellious. It makes you appear to be — well, it actually makes you a subhuman like he is. It doesn’t make you interesting. Regurgitating your own feces would be interesting. Well, I guess supporting him does make you interesting, because if you do support him you’re probably already regurgitating your own feces. You’re probably also having to use a wheelbarrow to practice walking on just your legs. I watched a documentary the other day about people who support this man (by the way, I’ve never met one, or at least never met anyone who would admit it out loud), and there was a guy who collected rare toy monsters. He had made a small donation to the nominee’s campaign and in return got a Christmas card. And he really believed the nominee sent it himself. I felt bad for the dude.

But now we have these Neanderthals calling for bloodshed and a revolution if he loses. One Wisconsin sheriff even took to social media suggesting that his supporters respond to his loss with “pitchforks and torches.” How in the hell did we get to this place? How could this have happened? I’m still not totally convinced it’s not a huge practical joke. I would just hate to be part of the punchline this time.

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Opinion The Last Word

Offering a little help with Trump’s test.

CREDIT: Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

I want desperately to help Donald Trump. I think I can be of great service to him, his image, his campaign, and his fight against the immigrants he thinks are trying to get into the United States to blow us up. I was elated when he made his “foreign policy” speech the other day and announced that, if elected president, he would put in place a new ideology “test” that immigrants would have to take before they were allowed into the country — to make sure we don’t let in, for heaven’s sake, any bigots. I levitated. My head spun. My eyes bulged. My heart raced. Actually, my skin crawled, but I ignored that because I really want to help. First, however, I have a few questions for Mr. Trump.

Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

Donald and Melania Trump

1) Is this test going to consist of questions that have to be answered true or false, or will it be multiple choice? And will there be an essay component to it?

2) I assume it will be the same test for immigrants from all countries, but I don’t want to make an ass out of you and me, so can you jot me a quick email to let me know if you need a set of questions for, say, people traveling from Syria that’s different than a set for, say, people traveling from Luxembourg? You just never know these days whom not to trust.

3) Are the questions going to be opinion-based or fact-based? Like, “What do you think about baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie?” as opposed to “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”

4) Will you ask them what they think about Trump Tower? This could get really iffy with the stuck-up French and those smartass, superior Germans, who like that woman president of theirs.

5) Will your wife Melania’s family members from Slovenia have to take the test when they come to visit, or can we just skip over them and let ’em on in to save time? I say, make them take the test just to be sure.

6) The trend now in all communications is to keep things brief. Can we keep the test brief for everyone, or is it going to “be huge”?

7) Does the size of male immigrants’ hands need to be addressed? Is it okay if theirs are bigger than yours? I’m a little doubtful you’ll give them much leeway on this one, given the way things have been going.

8) And speaking of size and hands and such, how are the two of us going to address these giant, naked Donald Trump statues that some damn crazy artists placed in various cities the other day? They may have been immigrants. Probably from Finland or some other punk-ass Scandinavian country. The Washington Post described the likenesses of you by writing, “The eyes scowl, the mouth pouts, and the veiny, almost reptilian skin looks like it was torn off a human-size frog and dipped in bronzer.” You know that’s not what you look like. And whatever terrorist made the statues put a little, tiny, barely visible … well, I’m sure you saw the photos and the headlines and the stories and the YouTube videos showing the statues to billions of people around the world. We need to put some questions in the quiz about this. Something to the effect of, “If we allow you to enter the United States of America, do you have plans to create naked statues of me, President Donald J. Trump, with a tiny penis, and place them in public for the world to see? Please answer true, false, or I’m not really sure at this time.” If they fill in the last option, keep them out of the country. It’s as easy as that.

9) The other big thing to worry about is keeping out people who might decide they like the Clintons. You don’t want to run the risk of that, do you? As you have pointed out, Hillary and Barack Obama founded ISIS, so you can bet plenty of the terrorists they trained are going to try to get in one way or another. You better put a question on the test about that. Something to the effect of, “When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came to the Middle East and founded ISIS, did you get any special training from them about how to blow up Americans or any other good, Christian people? Did Hillary show you how to make a bomb and bring it to the United States? Answer just true or false on this one.”

10) And finally, there’s this question about what is in the immigrant terrorists’ hearts when they try to come into the United States. What is their real ideology? Why do they hate the West so much? I think the best way to address that is the way you described it the other day during your town hall with Sean Hannity, when you, I think, talked about getting them off the internet. You said, “Sean, when you look at what’s going on with the internet and how ISIS is using the internet and what they’re doing and what they’re doing to us and then you have people in our country that say oh, you can’t do that, that’s doing something so bad to us, here we are, people — they want to blow us up. We have to be very careful.” I think you are 100 percent right. I would just put that exact quote on the test, and if they can figure out the answer, don’t dare EVER let them in.

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Opinion The Last Word

I just want it to be over.

CREDIT: REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

I am dreaming about December. Not because of the Christmas holiday. I am not a fan of crowds trampling each other like animals, trying to get the best deal on gadgets. No, I’m dreaming of December for several other reasons, the two main ones being that it will be less than 110 degrees outside, and I can get off the political crack pipe and not torture myself by watching political conventions or watching the news about the elections. Donald Trump will either be president and I can adapt accordingly, or he will lose and go away. I just want it to be over.

The Republican National Convention is indeed crack. You know watching it is bad for you, but you’re hooked, albeit only out of morbid curiosity. And I’m not talking about plagiarized speeches. I actually feel sorry for Melania Trump for that snafu but not as sorry for her as I feel because she’s married to the Antichrist who will no doubt gold leaf the White House if he wins the presidential election. It’s just that each speaker seemed to be more insane than the preceding one, and I couldn’t seem to stop watching them. I must have done something in a past life that I’m punishing myself for. By the time this issue of the paper comes out, that whole debacle will all be over and the Democratic National Convention will be well underway, and I’m just hoping for the best.

REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

Donald Trump

Having said that, I did not watch Trump’s acceptance speech. I just couldn’t. I feared it would be too much to bear, and from what I’ve seen of the news clips and what I’ve read, my intuition was right. He pissed off pretty much the whole world except for the lemmings who buy into his fear-mongering and isolationism. We are the butt of the joke of the entire planet — except for maybe Russia, where he got good press on his remarks.

And speaking of butts and dreaming of the election being over, we need this 8th Congressional District race to be OVER NOW and never again allow the candidates to buy television commercials during the campaign. If I see those two women drooling and drawling on and on and on about George Flinn one more time, I think I’m going to actually start smoking crack. Nothing personal against Flinn or the women. He’s not a bad guy. The women are probably perfectly sweet in real life. But those commercials give me much the same feeling as having shingles and being in the desert and having someone throw me against a giant cactus and pour gasoline on me. I hope I don’t know the people at the advertising agency who created those commercials. Who the hell needs a shovel to put a campaign sign in a yard? The really sick thing? I want to see more. I want to see just how bad they can get. I also need to see a shrink.

And other commercials aren’t much better. Among my favorites are the ones for David Kustoff, in which the voice over says, “Pro gun, pro life.” Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron given everything that’s going on around us? And why does this guy — or any of the candidates trying to be the congressional king of West Tennessee — think he can defeat ISIS? Hell, the entire U.S. government, FBI, CIA, and military haven’t been able to do that, but he promises that he can?

And then there’s Brian Kelsey. Again, nothing personal, but this is the guy who introduced the legislation some time back that would allow business owners to refuse service to gay people. It wasn’t until it got national, humiliating press that he backed off that one and went back to Dairy Queen. I’m not kidding. This is a recent post from his Facebook page:

“Tonight I spoke at the Tipton County Reagan Day Dinner, and afterwards I stopped by the Milington [sic] Dairy Queen to speak with voters! #BKatDQ”. Now, if that’s not the way to wipe out ISIS, I don’t know what is. But he really knows how to get great legislation passed. One totally awesome bill he sponsored and helped get signed into law “prohibits state funds from being expended in support of the office for diversity and inclusion at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; diverts such funding to a program for placing decals of the national motto on local and state law enforcement vehicles.” SWEET. Forget diversity, and put decals on cars instead. Maybe I’m taking this out of context, but it just doesn’t seem like a rule that would stick.

So come on, December. Or better yet, come on, January 20, 2017. If Hillary Clinton gets sworn in, we (or at least some of us) can breathe a little better. We know the White House won’t be gold-leafed. We know there won’t be a Rolls Royce or a Bentley parked out front with a doorman. However, if Donald Trump wins the election and indeed is sworn in, we’ll never have to worry about crime or terrorism again, because on that day, he “alone” will fix it.

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Opinion The Last Word

Scotched and Trumped!

CREDIT: Reuters | Carlo Allegri

Whoaaaa! I’ve been trying not to write much about Donald Trump because the idiot is getting way too much publicity, but I figured not many people pay attention to me, so I’m not adding to the media frenzy that much when I state that I really do think he might be the Antichrist.

I’m not a religious person, and I don’t know about all this Armageddon and heaven and hell and all that. And I was naive enough to think that, when he announced he was running for president of the United States, people would not get behind him the way they have. I, like many people, didn’t take him seriously at all, and just thought of him as bad entertainment, a train wreck hard not to stare at. I figured anyone who’d ever been to Trump Tower and witnessed how gaudy it is would know better.

But now that he’s on a world stage (well, at his Trump Turnberry golf course, one of several he has built in Scotland) offering up his rhetorical B.S. in support of the United Kingdom pulling out of the European Union — he’s actually become even more dangerous than he has been before now.

In my real job as PR guy for a major Memphis cultural organization, I deal with people from all over the world on a daily basis, especially the United Kingdom. We have a lot of U.K. journalists, filmmakers, bloggers, and others in the media whom I’ve become great friends with over the years, and they are absolutely mystified by the United States’ having someone like Donald Trump being in the position he’s in. And now that he has come out with his unfettered-by-any-knowledge opinion that it’s great for Great Britain to pull out of the European Union, they hate him even more. One friend actually just emailed me this morning, saying, “I honestly didn’t think this [pulling out] could happen. It makes me actually scared of Donald Trump.”

Why Trump decided to travel to Scotland to cut the ribbon on a golf course at the same time the United Kingdom is doing something more radical than anything it has done in 100 years is anyone’s guess, unless he just figured he would get more publicity if he rode on the coattails of an historic, controversial event that was getting the attention of the press all over the world.

Reuters | Carlo Allegri

Trexit, please.

And he did it in true, inexplicable Trump fashion. After circling his Scottish golf course in his G-TRMP helicopter, he landed to be met, as The New York Times reported, “much like the queen of England would be met, by staff members of Trump Turnberry — all clad in red ‘Make Turnberry Great Again’ hats — as well as two bagpipers in kilts who, along with Secret Service, preceded him up the sloping steps to his property. And he waxed proudly about his golf resort for more than 15 minutes, before finally taking questions on the seismic news of the day.”

While that may not be Antichrist behavior, it’s hard to make the case that it’s not pretty damn weird. Almost as weird as his referring to himself as “Scotch,” instead of Scottish.

His comments ranged from comparing renovating a golf course to making America great again to blaming Barack Obama for commenting on the U.K. pullout, even though he was standing there doing the same thing and had been doing it for a few days prior to his grand arrival, once someone in his campaign explained to him what “Brexit” meant.

While he heralded the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union as a catalyst that would drive down the pound and thereby drive more people to his Scottish golf courses (yes, it’s fine to scratch your head in public), he failed to mention that when building the Trump International Golf Links course near Aberdeen, Scotland, he sued the Scottish government for trying to build smart-energy wind farms that would block the view of the ocean from the courses, and psychologically tortured homeowners who refused to get their cottages out of his way. He promised 6,000 to 7,000 jobs for the development, which now has approximately 150 employees. And apparently, it gets few players because it’s built on shifting sand dunes and is usually shrouded in freezing cold fog.

One Scotch — oops, I mean, Scottish columnist wrote, “Some locals are puzzled over why Trump would build a golf course in a spot regularly shrouded in cold fog. It is fabulous news for the area, of course, and also for knitwear manufacturers, who will make a killing when the world’s top players step out on the first tee and feel as though their limbs are being sawn off by a northeast breeze that hasn’t paused for breath since it left the Arctic.”

So, all of you Trump supporters, this is the man you are backing to handle foreign policy for the United States? I think it might be the end times. Orlando, ISIS, Trump, the fact that Americans can buy a military assault rifle faster than you can get a drink in a crowded bar — it’s not looking good. I just hope Trump’s hair doesn’t turn out to be the mark of the beast.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Willie Earl Bates

Willie Earl Bates, owner of the Four Way Restaurant in South Memphis’ Soulsville, USA community, died from cancer last week. I’m not sure the city of Memphis knows what it has lost.

Willie Earl Bates

In 2001, after 50-plus years in operation under Clint and Irene Cleaves, Bates purchased the tiny but famous restaurant. He had been an executive with Universal Life Insurance, a real estate developer, and, early in life, delivered The Commercial Appeal in a red wagon, of which he was quite proud. The wagon sits outside the restaurant today in a fenced garden courtyard, dedicated to Bates’ mother, the late Magnolia Gossett Bates.

Bates was also proud to be the owner of a restaurant that helped change history — and served some of the best soul food in the world. Clint Cleaves was Mayor E.H. “Boss” Crump’s driver, and Crump told all of his friends that they needed to support the Fourway Grill (as it was known then) and it soon became the first truly desegregated restaurant in Memphis.

It was also a popular gathering spot for civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and others. The Fourway was immensely popular among musicians, hosting the likes of Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Gladys Night & the Pips, Ike & Tina Turner, and practically every artist who ever recorded around the corner at Stax Records.

I’ve been eating at the Four Way every couple of weeks since starting to work at Stax back in 2004. In 2014, I wrote a piece on Bates for Memphis magazine, and when I asked Mr. Bates what he thought about all of the celebrities who had eaten there (including hip-hop superstar Drake, who had just been there weeks earlier), he said: “I had a mother and daughter from Oklahoma in here not too long ago who had come from St. Jude. They had found out about the restaurant, and the little girl wanted to eat here. That was so touching, so satisfying, to know that we were able to make her happy during a time like that.”

That pretty much sums up Willie Earl Bates and why Memphis may not really know what it has lost.

Bates was a successful businessman and could easily have retired long before his death at 76, but he was too intent on making Memphis — and particularly Soulsville — a better place. He worked with numerous nonprofit organizations to help improve life in the community and often donated food to children’s organizations and other causes.

Former Mayor A C Wharton told me, “The Four Way always has been, and continues to be, a gathering place for community leaders. It may seem a bit quirky, but it was a status symbol to enter The Four Way through the back door and dine in the back room. Principals, doctors, lawyers, and accomplished entertainers, and occasionally, a skinny, hungry black Ole Miss law student like me could often be found in the ‘back room’ being served by Miss Dot.” 

Various crews from the Food Network and Travel Channel featured his famous catfish, turkey-and-dressing, yams, peach cobbler, and chitterlings, which Bates always told me never to order, as he made a face and shook his head.

Last year, author Dave Hoekstra published the critically acclaimed The People’s Place: Soul Food Restaurants and Reminiscences from the Civil Rights Era to Today, and the first restaurant he visited was the Four Way. Hoekstra was asked by the New York Times, “If someone wanted to follow your path, but had time to visit only one city, what would it be?” Hoekstra’s answer: “Memphis. I know at least seven or eight soul food restaurants in Memphis. But to get to what we’re getting at in the book, with the whole combination of the food and the civil rights movement, the Four Way holds a special place in my heart — they were so giving with their stories and with their hospitality. Just the whole history of Memphis and the civil rights movement .”

When I wrote my story for Memphis magazine, it was pretty much standard journalism and storytelling. What I didn’t get to include was how much I loved Mr. Bates and what an important friend he was to me. He had a genuine light-show twinkle in his eye every time I saw him. He was one of the kindest people I have ever known. Memphis was lucky to have had him. I’m luckier to have been his friend.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Greensward SVU

CREDIT: Joewarut | Dreamstime.com

Rats! I thought I had found something to change my life. Someone shared a Google document with me the other day, and when I was reading it, a little microphone icon popped and informed me that I could just talk and it would type what I was saying.

I’ve heard of these voice-recognition deals before but had never tried it. Of course, the first thing out of my mouth was an expletive of disbelief — something like, “F-k me!”— and there it appeared, right on the page in black and white. But then I started having problems with it. I was going to talk this column out and not have to type, but it started sending me mixed signals, telling me it couldn’t hear me and I needed to get somewhere quieter, even though I was in a silent room. I think it blanked out on me when I spoke the phrase, “Personally, I don’t get the big deal about the Greensward, and now I’ll probably be stoned in public.” (Imagine that!)

So there. I’ve said it, and now I’ve written it. Hate me if you must, but I just can’t seem to get all lathered up about grass. Hell, I wish the grass in my own yard would die so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. And I live close to the Memphis Zoo, so why don’t all of you who insist on parking on the grass just come park in my yard for free and do me a big favor. And save yourself some money and moral guilt. While you’re there, do you mind trimming the hedges that are about 20 feet taller than my roof?

Don’t get me wrong. I adore Overton Park (and the work the Overton Park Conservancy is doing) and spent most of my high school years skipping class to hang out there with my guitar and some friends singing Cat Stevens and Al Green songs. And, of course, people shouldn’t be allowed to park on grass in a park as beautiful as Overton Park, but I just don’t feel the emotional upheaval so many people seem to be feeling. I’m more worried about other things in Memphis, but I’m happy that so many of you are fighting the Greensward battle because maybe it will finally be resolved and we can move on to other things.

Maybe if I paid more attention to the Greensward issue I would understand why there are so many yard signs and banners and protests and arguments over the grass, but I just haven’t had time. I’m too worried about someone hacking into my refrigerator.

Yes, I saw an investigative news piece the other day about how hackers are hacking into people’s doorbells, security systems, televisions, home robots, and everything else that can be hacked in order to get to the home computer and steal bank information and the like. Now there’s that to worry about. I wish someone would hack into my refrigerator. They’d probably vomit. Hackers, you are more than welcome to find your way into my refrigerator, and, while you’re in there, would you please find a way to hack out the leftover crawfish from April’s Overton Square Crawfish Festival, the leftover smothered cabbage that is now emitting visible gasses, and — at any given time — the six to eight tuna cans with about a half teaspoon of tuna in each one because one of the cats won’t eat actual cat food and prefers tuna at different temperatures at different times of the day. There are also the lemon halves that now look like fuzzy little baby geese without legs, and I’m all but certain there’s an old Krystal lurking in there somewhere like Waldo.

Joewarut | Dreamstime.com

And if you’d like to hack into my television set, be my guest. You’ll see that I watch the local news for one hour every morning to keep up with the homicide rate and most recent revelations about hair extensions, then one hour and 10 minutes of NBC’s Today show for my Matt Lauer and Tamron Hall fix and to see concerts by today’s music superstars I’ve never heard of. The rest of the time it’s a tossup between Chopped on the Food Network and Law & Order Special Victims Unit on whatever channel I can find it on.

See what you can do with that fascinating information over in Romania or wherever you are. But don’t hack in there while I’m actually watching Chopped because I become a sinister person. If you’ve ever watched that show, you’ve noticed that the contestants are more in competition about their personal sob stories than they are about creating their culinary concoctions from baskets filled with disparate delicacies. Someone in the family has recently died a horrible death, and they are on the show to honor that relative. Half of them are recovering crack heads. Some have horrible emotional issues they are trying to overcome. Others have been in prison and are trying to get their lives back on track by making a great soufflé. It goes on and on and on to the point that I just start screaming demeaning insults at them from the couch. “Hey, idiot! Knock off all that whining about your dead mother, and just do something with the yak testicles, cotton candy, and lima beans!” “So what if you were in the military and have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Stop yapping about it, and stuff that ox meat with some dill pickles and bubble gum! Win that $10,000 for the Greensward, and let’s move on!”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Dear God … Why Prince?

CREDIT: Mark Milstein | Dreamstime.com

Dear, God …

No, I’m not just saying “Dear, God” to be saying it. I’m writing an open letter. So here goes.

Dear, God, at this point I’m just pissed off. If you are indeed real, are you the one running this universe? Are you the one aligning or misaligning the planets? Are you the one who let Merle Haggard and David Bowie both die earlier this year — on their birthdays, no less? And now Prince? PRINCE? At age 57?

Mark Milstein | Dreamstime.com

Prince

What in God’s name (Oops! Sorry!) were you thinking? Have you lost your mind? I know you have that giveth and taketh away thing going, but really? Prince at 57? I think you can do better. My best friend cried for two solid days about Prince. Are you happy you made her do that? This is one of those losses — like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and John John Kennedy — that will make us all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. I, for one, was having my brain examined in a workshop with my coworkers. You don’t want to know the results. And learning that Prince had just died didn’t help matters at all.

Why don’t you take out someone whom we’d be better off without, like Ted Cruz? Take that idiot now, and give us back Prince. Hell, (Oops! Sorry again!), take Tom Cruise. Take him and all the rest of the Scientologists. We don’t need them.

Mark Milstein | Dreamstime.com

Prince

Oh, dear. I can hear my phone ringing and email pinging now. The last time I mentioned the Scientologists, just in passing, their public relations person at the celebrity center in Nashville contacted me. Apparently, someone in Collierville (Collierville!) turned me in. Who would have thought there were Scientologists in Collierville?

She was all unnerved because I made a crack about them and told me I should call her if I wanted to find out what Scientology was really all about. So I told her, “Look, I had to deal with you people for years when Isaac Hayes was still alive, and you people are freaks. Don’t try giving me the runaround, because I know you, and not one of you is able to explain this without lying through your teeth.”

I don’t think she was too thrilled. I wonder if that’s why I found a dead rat in my bedroom the other morning. No, that was a gift from my tomcat, who also knocked over my flat-screen television (I finally got one!) the other day and caused me to crack a rib trying to catch it before it hit the floor. So now I have a torn intercostal muscle in one side of my ribs and a cracked rib on the other side. AND I have a spider bite on my arm. I’m falling apart. I have high blood pressure, low blood sugar, tendinitis, sinusitis, carpal and ulnar tunnel in my wrists, arthritis, vertigo while driving, degenerative disc disease, horrible allergies, dry eye syndrome, acid reflux, anxiety disorder, and a cyst the size of a fig on my elbow. But at least I have a tomcat!

I also have a handwritten letter on my office wall from former United States ambassador to Germany, Philip D. Murphy, which opens with the salutation, “Dear TimCat.” I kid you not. It ends with the line, “You make me so proud to be an American!” Yes, he underlined it. Can you believe that? He wrote me the letter (by hand!) a few years ago after I took some Stax Music Academy students to Berlin to perform for him and a lot of other people, AND he cried after they performed. So there.

But back to my open letter to God about Prince. Why would you take such a sweet, handsome, fashionable, shy musical genius from us and let all of these terrorists and Republicans stick around to drive us nuts? Is this some kind of a bizarre test? Why not take Donald Trump? Good Lord (Oops! Sorry again!). You’re going to let someone with that hair stay alive and take Prince away from us? Have you even heard “When Doves Cry”? Well, the doves are sobbing their guts out now, so thanks for nothing.

Why not take Marie Osmond, the most frightening person ever to walk this insane planet? Oh, wait. You may have created this planet. Sorry. But if you did, you could still do better. Look at Houston. All flooded. Oh, sorry. There’s no flooding anymore; it’s “ponding.” When did flooding become “ponding”?

ARE YOU UP THERE? If you are, what are you doing? Deciding which genius musician to take out next? We not only want Prince back, but we also want Alex Chilton as well. We’ll give you Ted Cruz, Tom Cruise, Donald Trump, Marie Osmond, AND Taylor Swift if you’ll give us back Prince, Alex Chilton, Isaac Hayes, Maurice White, Bobby Blue Bland, David Bowie, and Merle Haggard. Sound like a deal?

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Savage City

CREDIT: Zrfphoto | Dreamstime.com

I’m not exactly sure what to write here. It’s the wee hours of the morning on the 48th anniversary of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. My morning routine these days is to wake up at 6 a.m. and watch an hour of local news until the Today show comes on at 7 a.m., and then I switch to that and halfway watch it while talking incessantly to my cats, wondering when I’m going to get the wherewithal to clean up my bedroom, and making sticky notes for my front door reminding me not to leave the house without turning off the coffee pot.

But I’m up a lot earlier than usual this morning because someone sent me a text at 3 a.m. and that was it. Never could fall back asleep. And I wasn’t even aware that it was April 4th until I turned on the television. And the only thought racing through my mind, probably like many Memphians my age or older, was what Dr. King would think if he came back for a visit here today.

Zrfphoto | Dreamstime.com

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the first stories on the news was about a 22-year-old “caregiver,” who was arrested for savagely beating the elderly gentleman whose “care” was supposed to have been her job. Somewhere in the midst of all this, she told another of the man’s caregivers, who noticed the abuse, “Yeah, I whipped his butt, and I don’t care who you go and tell.” And then she beat the man again a few days later, sending him to the hospital. I wonder what was and is going through her mind. She should be studied.

As of the end of March, there have been 60 murders in Memphis, twice the rate of Chicago. No telling how many cases of assault, domestic violence, weapons charges, etc. It would be too depressing — for me, anyway — to even know that information, much less compile it.

All you have to do is Google “Memphis church brawl” in Google News and check out one story with a video about a bunch of church members getting into a street fight after they all got out of church, pummeling each other and screaming and ripping each other’s clothes off in the street. Go ahead. Watch it.

Shoot-outs at McDonald’s. A former Memphis police officer arrested three times for stalking his ex-girlfriend. Man stabbed in South Memphis. Close friends involved in shooting; one dead, one in critical condition. High school student arrested for bringing loaded pistol to school in his backpack. Man arrested for bringing guns to church on Easter morning (and don’t even get me started on the legislators trying pass the law to allow guns in church). You know, of course, that it goes on and on and on and on.

I still don’t know what to write. I’m just imagining Dr. King being here again and what he would think. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I don’t even know what to think about all this. In some ways I wish all the local media could come to a consensus to at least try not to give the violence in Memphis so much coverage to keep us all from becoming totally desensitized to it, but that certainly wouldn’t make it go away. More and better jobs might put a dent in it, just because people wouldn’t have so much idle time on their hands to kill each other, and eliminating poverty, at least I think, would help end some of the violence.

I’m not brainy enough to know the answer to all this, although I know there has to be more than one answer. I do think that the entire criminal justice system needs to be shut down and reopened with a whole new plan. Too often it just makes people’s situations — and all of our lives —worse. There’s little-to-no rehabilitation. Inmates are treated like animals. Guards, or at least a good number of them, are on private power trips or selling things to inmates. Mental illness is disregarded most of the time. The time period between court dates is a joke. And there are so many people in jail for just having been caught with pot it’s ridiculous.

So, to all of you people with smarter brains than I have, what are we going to do? Things can’t keep going the way they are going. I know Mayor Strickland has at least been talking about these issues. And there are neighborhood associations and other organizations out there working to fix problems.

The thing that scares me the most, though, and that really haunts me, is that too many people don’t seem to have a conscience. That may be the problem that will be hardest to fix. Shooting and killing someone over a trivial argument doesn’t seem to be unusual or shocking anymore. How in the world does anyone fix that? Do we need another Martin Luther King to dedicate his or her life to nonviolence?

I wonder what he would say.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

A Tangled Web

CREDIT: Daniel Raustadt | Dreamstime.com

Daniel Raustadt | Dreamstime.com

Does anyone else feel like he or she is living in some kind of a weird dream that you just can’t shake, no matter how many times you wake up, go back to sleep, and wake up again? There are two words that seem to be the only words in the dream: Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump. I feel like some kind of demon has taken hold of me and is casting the Donald Trump spell on me. When it comes to the others in the primary, I kind of almost find myself taking up for him. Someone SHOOT ME NOW, because I think Donald Trump might be the best thing that ever happened to the United States.

Of course, I don’t like him and would have to move to Canada along with millions of other Americans if he were to, for some reason known only to the demons, become president, but as a backseat political junkie who’s mostly just entertained by it all, I’m getting to the point that I like it when he lashes out at his Republican rivals.

That insipid speech that Mitt Romney gave accusing him of being a fraud and trying to play voters for suckers? First of all: Wow, how original, Mitt. How earth-shattering. I’ve never heard someone give such a potentially important speech that was nothing but rote regurgitation of what’s already been said over and over and over. And when interviewed later, he had that Mitt grin that suggests he was really proud of himself. Secondly, what does he think he’s done every time he’s run for office. He’s just as bad as Trump.

And Ted Cruz? He is one of the smarmiest people ever to run for office in the United States. I can’t even fathom the thought of how anyone could stand at a voting machine and press a button beside his name.

It’s fun to watch the “establishment” Republicans rushing around like the Keystone Cops trying to stop Trump because they don’t see him as a conservative Tea Party candidate. I think that because of Trump, the Republican party could be on its way out. It really couldn’t be more out of touch, and now that they are in such raucous frenzy, it’s like watching a sitcom. The implosion of the “establishment” Republican party over the real estate developer and reality show host is, in my humble opinion — or IMHO, as you kids say today — making it so that we may never have a Republican president again. We might actually progress as a country instead of going back in time, especially if President Obama pulls off adding a new justice to the Supreme Court.

It occurs to me that the new phenomenon that has been gripping the Mid-South for the past few weeks — and has made for some strange headlines — may also be why Trump acts the way he does. In case you’ve missed it, there’s been a string of crimes involving thefts of human hair extensions. There have even been killings of owners of human hair extension stores. It’s become so bad that many women are now convinced the human hair extensions are demonically possessed. Yes, we are talking about wicked weaves and wigs. Evil extensions. Lurid locks. Hate-filled hair.

One of the more chilling soundbites came from a woman who posted this message on YouTube: “Whose-ever hair I was wearing on my head, that heifer had a bad omen and that bad omen followed her from India and came on top of my head, and I took on her spirit.”

Another woman, whom we’ll refer to here as Rachel, blogged, “I have done Brazilian and Peruvian [hair extensions], so I thought to try something different and more natural … Indian. Last weekend, I ordered for it and made it. I prayed on it and believed it was fine. Yesterday night, I had the strangest of dreams. I saw that I made a hair that allowed me to pack it, thus project my face and make it look slimmer. All of a sudden, I got into a scam with 3 people who began to chase me all over the place to kill me. I got off from them narrowly then got into a market. There, a madman began to chase me.” A madman, no less.

To cut the long story short, Rachel said she narrated the dream to her husband, who asked her to remove her weave. Even though she was reluctant, because it cost so much, she cut it off, anointed her head, and prayed. She then burned it. According to her, “Carrying another’s hair is like carrying the person’s spirit.”

Others suggested soaking the hair extension in the “Blood of Jesus” to purify and cleanse it from any attachment to evil powers and forces … before wearing it out to a club or to church. Basically, because a lot of the human hair comes from India, the women are now saying that Hindus are satanic because they believe in false idols, and that when they get a weave, the devil is taking over their spirits.

Even I couldn’t make up this. So the question I pose is this: Is that human hair on Donald Trump’s head from a demonically possessed spirit? Is he being crude, vulgar, and misogynistic because he has a spiritually tainted toupee? I guess we all shall see. Nothing would surprise me now.